Six decades of heavy lift.

Modern Crane & Rigging — the name on the door since 1987 — still runs every job the same way: the lift is engineered before the boom leaves the ground.

Plan my lift Call dispatch — 24/7
Eastern Kentucky · Southern West Virginia · Southwest Virginia Operated cranes to 350 ton / 350 ft

From 1967 to this morning’s dispatch.

The whole story, five entries long.

A crane company is a record of promises kept. Ours opens in 1967 — twenty years before the name went on the door — and every year since has been run the same way: plan the pick, make the pick, bring everybody home.

  1. Archive photograph of family riggers at work in the early years of the trade

    1967

    The family enters the trade

    Before there was a company there were riggers in the family — hands that learned the work in the coalfields and passed it down.

  2. Archive photograph of a crane working in the Appalachian coalfields

    THE YEARS BETWEEN

    An apprenticeship in the mountains

    Hauling, hoisting and hard lessons in the hollows — a long apprenticeship that hardened into a standard.

  3. Archive photograph from the founding era of Modern Crane and Rigging

    1987

    The name goes on the door

    The family opens its own book at Stanville, Kentucky: Modern Crane & Rigging, est. 1987.

  4. Archive photograph of a larger crane as the fleet grew

    THE RECORD GROWS

    Bigger iron, same last names

    Longer booms and heavier picks, with the same family names on the crew list — and every dispatch logged.

  5. A Modern Crane all-terrain crane at full boom on a present-day jobsite

    TODAY

    The count keeps climbing — every crew home

    An owned fleet to 350 tons and 350 feet — and every critical pick still drawn before it’s picked.

16,000 dispatches.
16,000 safe trips home.

Family-run since 1987.

Every dispatch is somebody’s father, son, or neighbor working under a load. Almost six decades into the trade, the number on the left has never gotten ahead of the number on the right — the iron comes home, and so does the crew. That’s the whole business.

  • NCCCO certified operators, riggers & signal persons
  • SC&RA member
  • AC&T Top 100 largest crane companies in North America
  • Fully insured & bonded — certificates on request
40 years
In business since 1987 — and the family has been rigging since 1967.
12,000+
Crane rentals delivered across three states — and anywhere the job called from.
EMR under 0.87
Held below 0.87 for a decade. Safety isn’t a poster in our shop; it’s the schedule.
Archive photograph of an early Modern Crane lift, decades back Archive photograph from the family's early years in the crane trade
From the family archive — the same name on the door, the same standard on the hook.

Six ways we carry the load.

The trades the family was raised on.

Operated Crane Rental

Crane and operator together, ready for the lift — from tight infill sets to multi-day plant work, run by NCCCO-certified hands.

Certified & Engineered Lift Plans

Documented, signed-off lift plans with full 3D modeling — every pick engineered on paper first.

Commercial & Industrial Steel Erection

Structural steel set true and plumb, backed by our sister company Modern Construction Inc.

Heavy & Oversize Transport & Storage

Moving and staging loads other haulers won’t touch — oversize, overweight, time-critical — with secured storage when needed.

Industrial, Hydrocarbon & Mining Support

Turnaround, outage and production lift support for the plants, pipelines and mines that power the region — schedule-driven, safety-first.

Rigging & Signal

Certified riggers and signal persons who plan the connection, control the load, and keep the picture clear from pick to set.

Four decades of lift plans.

Every critical pick is engineered before the boom leaves the ground — load radius, boom geometry, counterweight and ground bearing worked out in advance, in-house. The tools have gotten sharper; the rule never changed. Here’s what it looks like on our screens today.

In-house CAD lift drawings. Every critical pick modeled in 3D — the crane, the load, and the building it swings over.
In-house CAD lift drawing showing crane placement, boom geometry and load radius
Certified lift plan sheets. Load radius, boom geometry and counterweight — documented and signed off before we quote.
Ground-bearing pressure modeling software showing outrigger load calculations
Ground-bearing modeling. Outrigger loads against the actual soil, worked out before the mats hit the dirt.
Crane siting plan drawn over the jobsite layout
Crane siting. The machine placed on the real site plan — access, swing and set, resolved on paper first.
Manufacturer load chart pages used to verify crane capacity
Load-chart library. The right machine verified against the chart — not against a hunch.

Fleet and reach

350TON

350FT

Capacity & range figures are illustrative — never a statement of lift-readiness.

Our owned fleet runs to 350 ton and 350 feet of stick — sized for the mills, mines and mountain jobs the family grew up on. When the pick calls for more, we source it through a national rental network: same crew, same lift plan, same standard.

Modern Crane's fleet of mobile cranes staged in the yard at Mare Creek, Stanville
The yard at Mare Creek, Stanville — where every dispatch starts.

Built for the mountains we work in.

Home base is Mare Creek in Stanville, Kentucky. From there the territory runs across Eastern Kentucky, Southern West Virginia and Southwest Virginia — hollows, switchbacks, one-lane bridges and all. Every shaded county below is ground we know; touch or hover one for its name.

Kentucky: Pikeville, Prestonsburg, Paintsville, Hazard · West Virginia: Williamson, Logan · Virginia: Grundy

And when the job calls from farther out — we travel. Anywhere the job is.

County map of the Modern Crane service territory across Eastern Kentucky, Southern West Virginia and Southwest Virginia Dozens of counties across the three states are shaded as home territory, with the Stanville, Kentucky headquarters marked by an ember crosshair near the center. Anchor towns include Pikeville, Prestonsburg, Paintsville and Hazard in Kentucky; Williamson and Logan in West Virginia; and Grundy in Virginia. STANVILLE · HQ
  • Home counties
  • Edge of home ground
  • Stanville — HQ

The shading fades — the service doesn’t. Off the map is a longer drive, not a no.

Then and now.

Full field gallery →
THEN — FROM THE ARCHIVE
Archive photograph of an early truck crane on a jobsite, decades back
The iron the trade was learned on.
NOW — ON THE HOOK TODAY
Crane setting a bridge girder across a river
Bridge girder, set across the water — engineered set, no surprises.
THEN — FROM THE ARCHIVE
Archive photograph from the family's early crane work
Same name on the door, decades back.
NOW — ON THE HOOK TODAY
Structural steel being erected by crane
Structural steel — true and plumb, every bay.
THEN — FROM THE ARCHIVE
Archive photograph of a crane at work in the family's early years
The standard was set long before it was written down.
NOW — ON THE HOOK TODAY
Crane providing production lift support at an Eastern Kentucky mine
Production support at an Eastern Kentucky mine — schedule-driven, safety-first.

What customers say

Best lift plans we’ve ever seen.

— a repeat customer. They’ve said it more than once.

Almost six decades in the trade and you still won’t find a wall of five-star cards here — we’d rather earn reviews than write them. If we’ve carried a load for you, a sentence in your own words is worth more to us than any of that.

Leave us a review Read our Google reviews

Straight answers.

The questions dispatch hears most, answered the way we’d answer on the phone.

What does a crane rental cost?

Every job is priced to the lift — crane size, time on site, rigging and access all move the number, so a flat rate card would be wrong half the time. Call dispatch or send the form below. The quote comes with the lift plan, not before it.

Does the crane come with a certified operator?

Yes. We’re an operated rental company — the crane arrives with an NCCCO-certified operator, and certified riggers and signal persons when the job calls for them.

What size cranes do you run?

Our owned fleet runs to 350 ton and 350 feet of reach. Bigger picks get sourced through a national rental network, with the same crew planning the lift. Capacity figures are illustrative — never a statement of lift-readiness.

What’s a certified lift plan?

A documented, signed-off engineering package: load radius, boom geometry, counterweight and ground bearing modeled in 3D before we quote the job. On a critical pick it isn’t paperwork — it’s the reason the pick goes exactly as drawn.

What areas do you serve?

Eastern Kentucky, Southern West Virginia and Southwest Virginia are home ground — Pikeville, Prestonsburg, Paintsville, Hazard, Williamson, Logan, Grundy. And we travel anywhere the job calls for.

How fast can you mobilize?

Dispatch answers 24/7 — nights, weekends, holidays. For outages and emergencies we’ve rolled the same day; for planned work, the earlier we see the lift, the better the plan.

Open the next line in the book.

Tell us what you’re lifting and where. A dispatcher — not a call center — reads every request, and the phone works the same at 2 a.m. as it does at 2 p.m. The next lift is yours; we’ve been ready for it since 1967.

1-877-272-6351

24/7 dispatch — toll-free. Local: 606-478-5600

Modern Crane & Rigging
474 Mare Creek, Stanville, KY 41659
Hours: 24/7 dispatch — never closes